When her cousin said to her, ‘Fillette, you were really very audacious when you went to gather those flowers at S. Pharamond. But audacity succeeds—Voltaire and Napoléon were right,’ she could have wept with humiliation and indignation.
‘Perhaps he thinks as badly of me, too!’ she thought, in that perplexity which had never ceased, since his gift of the ivory casket, to torment her.
‘There is storm in the air,’ said the Duc once to his wife; ‘Othmar will be like one of those magicians who used to raise a force that they could neither guide nor quell. He is making a child worship him, and forgetting that he will make her a woman, and that then she will not be satisfied with being hung about with trinkets, and set ankle-deep in gold like an Indian goddess. I am quite sure that this marriage, which pleases you all so much, will be a very unhappy one—some day.’
‘You think what you wish—all men do,’ said his wife. ‘I have not a doubt that it will be perfectly happy—as happy as any marriage is, that is to say. She will adore him; men like to be adored. You can only get that from somebody very young. He will never say an unkind word to her, and he will never object, however much she may spend. If she cannot be content with that——’
The Duc laughed derisively.
‘Gold! gold! gold! That is the joy of the cabotine, not of Yseulte de Valogne. What she will want will be love, and he will not give it her. With all deference to you, I see the materials for a very sombre poem in your épopée.’
‘I repeat, your wish is father to your thought. On the theatres women do rebel, and stab themselves, or other people, but in real life they are very much more pliable. In a year’s time she will not care in the least about Othmar himself, but she will have grown to like the world and the life that she leads in it. She will have learnt to amuse herself; she will not fret if he pass his time elsewhere——’
‘You are entirely wrong,’ said de Vannes, with irritation. ‘She is a child now, but in a few weeks she will be a woman. Then he will find that you cannot light a fire on grass and leave the earth unscorched. She has the blood of Gui de Valogne. She will not be a saint always. If she find herself neglected, she will not forgive it when she shall understand what it means. If he be her lover after marriage, all may be well; I do not say the contrary. But if he neglect her then, as he neglects her now——’
‘Pray, do not put such follies into her head. Neglected! When not a day passes that he does not send her the most marvellous presents, does not empty on her half the jewellers’ cases out of Europe and Asia.’
‘He makes up in jewels what he wants in warmth,’ said Alain de Vannes. ‘At present she is a baby, a little saint, an innocent; as ignorant as her ivory Madonna; but in six months’ time she will be very different. She will know that she belongs to a man who does not care for her; she will want all that he does not give her; she will be like a rich red rose opening where all is ice——’